Financial Services Bill

My Lords, I echo what has been said by other noble Lords and express a certain amazement that we are spending so much time going through this Bill. I was very pleased to receive from the Minister an invitation to a meeting last Monday. I thought that perhaps he was going to tell us that the Government were going to give up this Bill and replace it with a much shorter one comprising the elements on which we all agree, getting it through before Parliament is dissolved. Unfortunately, the Minister’s invitation to the meeting arrived after the meeting had taken place, so I was unable even to reply. I understand that some noble Lords were able to attend but that the answers they expected from the Minister were not forthcoming. Like other noble Lords, I express surprise that so much is made of the Council for Financial Stability, because this tripartite council seems to be exactly the same as the standing committee that it replaces. There is an awful lot of print to read but if you are saying that three people on a standing committee, which means that they meet regularly, are going to meet in another format to do precisely the same things, that seems to be no change at all. Furthermore, I understand that each of them may delegate their representative power to attend the council to anyone else in their organisation, so it may be that, busy though they all are, they may not meet together as the council that often. I was very surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Peston, express the view that the Bill is an integrated whole. To me, it seems to be a complete hotchpotch of scarcely related topics. First, there is the change of the standing committee to a tripartite council; then there is a large part about consumer education and the creation, even now, of another quango; then you have a section about strengthening the powers of the FSA; and then there is a part introducing to English law, for the first time, collective proceedings. That does not seem to sit very easily with the Bill because it represents a complete break with the past, which I think was the reason that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, decided to intervene at Second Reading. I also agree with my noble friend Lord Higgins that the Bill utterly fails to put the macro-prudential back together with the micro-prudential. Clearly, you cannot effectively be responsible for the macro-prudential if you have no ultimate power to control the micro-prudential as well. For those reasons, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes, which seek to include some clarity in the situation.